Antonio J. Gallego

On the optimization of irradiance distribution in solar tower plants with flat receivers

One of the most important problems in the operation of solar power towers is to achieve a uniform flux density distribution at the receiver, in order to avoid hot spots. An algorithm that computes the aim points for the heliostat field to obtain a uniform flux density distribution and optimize the solar irradiation collected by the receiver is presented in this paper. The algorithm is tested using a model of the heliostat field of the CESA-1 solar tower plant at the Plataforma Solar de Almería (PSA) in southern Spain.

Fault tolerant MPC of a solar trough field based on classification and regression trees

Direct solar radiation is important in a solar trough plant because it is the perturbation that affects most the operation. Generally, it is measured locally. Production losses or dangerous situations may occur when controlling a plant with wrong measurements. A possible solution is to have several pyrheliometers though two problems arise: cost and sensor fusion (complexity). The aim of this paper is to prove that a solar estimation based on Classification and Regression Trees can be used to design a Fault Tolerant Model Predictive Control strategy capable to work with erroneous values of radiation or even none, avoiding dangerous situations or production losses.

PRESSURIZED WATER TEMPERATURE CONTROL OF A FRESNEL COLLECTOR FIELD-TYPE SOLAR COOLING SYSTEM USING EXPLICIT MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROL

This paper addresses the design of an explicit model predictive controller for the outlet water temperature control of a solar cooling plant system that uses a field of Fresnel collectors. Solving multi-parametric quadratic programs (mpQP) to obtain explicit solutions to constrained model predictive control (MPC) problems enables the offline design before the MPC controller is implemented, e.g., on a standard programmable logic controller. The simulation result shows the feasibility of the proposed control design for such a system. This is implementable on industrial application-based hardware platforms where computational and memory resources are limited.

Solar radiation estimator and fault tolerant model predictive control of a parabolic-trough field

In this paper we propose an estimator of solar radiation and a heuristic radiation selector to design a solar radiation Fault Tolerant Model Predictive Control strategy for solar trough plants. The complete design of the control system proposed has been simulated using the model of ACUREX solar trough plant at the Plataforma Solar de Almería (PSA) using a Gain Scheduling Generalized Predictive Control(GS-GPC) control strategy. Simulation results (estimation/heuristic selector/GS-GPC) of the proposed scheme are compared with simulations of the same GS-GPC controller strategy when using only a pyrheliometer radiation measurement.